Jun

26

2011

Tired of seeing this window pop up, and having to enter your password every time you use an app? But don’t want to open up all your apps for use?

Here’s a nice and easy fix for you, launch the Keychain Access application (/Applications/Utilities/Keychain Utility) locate the entry relating to the application you want to always allow. In this case, it’s Microsoft Messenger for Mac, double click on the entry to bring up the details window:

Now, select the “Allow all applications to access this item.” click on the save changes button, and enter your password when prompted. You should now find you will no longer be prompted to enter your password when using this application.

NB: The above method comes with it own pit falls, obviously this will now allow anything to have access to this keychain data without prompting you. Bear this in mind when you are authorising items.

Jun

26

2011

If you are a keen believer in protected device usage (which you should be) and you employ a strict security regime including a strict firewall policy, you may find yourself constantly having to allow access to stock applications such as iTunes. This is because these applications are ‘codesigned’ to ensure the firewall only lets them through if, they have not been modified in anyway. So if you have installed any iTunes plugins, or modified iTunes in anyway, you will find this pop up will appear each time despite which option you choose.

To stop this for coming up, you will either need to reverse the modifications to iTunes or obtain a self sign certificate and sign it yourself.

If you’d rather reverse the modifications (Recommended) launch a terminal window (/Applications/Utilities/Terminal) and type in the following:

codesign -vvv /Applications/iTunes.app/

This will return one of the following results:

(Which actually suggests iTunes has not been modified, so if you get this at this stage – this tutorial will not help you)

Or you will get the following (particular files may vary):

So as you can see, the codesign application suggests the signed version of iTunes has been modified, therefore it’s no longer ‘signed’

To resolve this issue, launch a finder window location iTunes in your Applications folder, right click on it and click show contents. Now remove each of the files listed in the terminal window. It’s worth noting that removing the wrong files from this folder may well prevent iTunes from working all together. So you may want to either back them up somewhere or simply leave them in the ‘Trash’ until you are happy.

If you would prefer to leave iTunes in it’s modified state, then you will need to follow the Code Signing Guide over at Apples website

Feb

28

2010

Today I was presented with the challenge of CR2 files.. I must admit, when I was first asked – I didn’t even know what a CR2 file was, apparently it’s a RAW file format used by some of Canon’s digital camera range. For some reason, the file format is not automatically accessible using some of the off shelf photo editing packages. Including photoshop would you believe.

My first plan of attack was to find out if my MacBook could open the files, so I tested it and sure enough they opened straight away in the OS X preview app. (I love Mac’s ) I did consider transferring all of the files over to my Mac, to then use an applescript batch convert and then send them back.

However, as these pictures where from Kat, who’s doing a university course the resolution was immense, leaving a file size to match.. So this soon became a non runner. Each file was taking upwards of 10 minutes to transfer and there was well over 300 of them!

I went on to try and hunt down an application to do the batch convert on Windows, even trying Canon’s own app – all of which failed. We then decided on a RAW file image viewer, then at least we only needed to transfer the files Kat wanted to keep. Again this turned out to be a complete failure..

As luck would have it, I stumbled across a forum post claiming Windows Photo Gallery could actually open the files. So we gave it ago, and sure enough as soon as we added the folder to the gallery away it went and generate thumbnails for each picture. It was even kind enough to offer to download the latest RAW file codec from Canon’s site!

So if you have RAW CR2 files you need to open, try Microsoft Photo Gallery before scouring the web for RAW file convertors! Or buy a MacBook of course

Jan

28

2010

MacUpdate Desktop 5.0 is essentially an automatic update application which covers over 30,000 Mac applications. Desktop 5.0 has a really simple easy to use interface. Almost instantly displaying a list of all the apps installed on your Mac, and shows you which (if any) currently have updates available for them. But wait! It doesn’t stop there, simply by clicking on the out of app gives you the option to download and install the update without even leaving the application! This is ideal if you have a large collection of apps which are regularly updated. There’s even an option to update all out of date applications at the click of a button!

Not only does desktop cover your apps, but it’s also capable of checking for and downloading updates for widgets, screen savers and preference pane apps.

Once you have downloaded and installed your updates the view switches to enable you to quickly confirm all updates have been installed successfully.

The application also supports watchlists (see picture to the left) which enables you to group together your applications, so that you can perform updates on only one category of application at a time. Handy if you are short on time, but want to update all of your regular use apps at once!

MacUpdate Desktop 5.0 is a subscription based service which is $20 per year, however for that you get some additional member only benefits:

Jan

6

2010

As a recent windows to mac convert, I quickly realised there was some applications which as of yet had not been ported to Mac OS X. An these where the things which I was really starting to miss!

I have previously used many various Linux Distro’s so was fully away of the Wine Project, however I was having problems with some of my windows apps. So I decided the only way to go was a virtual machine with windows installed. For this I used Sun’s Virtual Box. This filled the gap nicely. However, it was a little processor intensive to run some of the smaller apps.

Luckily for me (and you) a new wrapper for Wine has been released. WineBottler manages and wraps your windows based applications into Mac OS X apps.

So – once downloaded and installed, WineBottler will keep an eye out for any Windows files (with .exe extensions) and offer to kindly wrap them for you in a wine based OS X app.